No Reformation, No King James Version

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No Reformation then no King James Version should be a battle cry! I may be a Baptist, I still don't consider myself a Protestant but I'm no Baptist Brider, I'm somewhat of a King James Only-ist (even if many of my favorite preachers aren't and even Charles H. Spurgeon used what would be the English Standard Version today as an additional reference) because I don't trust any of the modern versions these days (because I believe all the 17 missing verses shouldn't be in the footnotes) but I would say one thing - the precious KJV wouldn't be possible without the Reformation!

Okay, I agree that the Word of God preceded the KJV. The KJV is a translation of the Word of God. You had the Old Latin Bible which contained God's Word. Unfortunately, there's the Latin Vulgate which had some missing verses and that's what all was accessible (for the time being) to the Reformers. All Martin Luther had was a Roman Catholic translation for his time yet it led to the Reformation. Later, John Calvin would organize what would be the Geneva Study Bible though later King James called the marginal notes as "treasonous". Yet, if it wasn't for the efforts of Luther and Calvin and should we also include William Tyndale (who was said to be an early Baptist and not a Protestant yet he was an important figure) as part of this history. They took the risk to translate the Bible into several languages - a move that meant death by the Roman Catholic institution.

Perhaps the more outstanding figure of the Reformation is John Calvin himself. Later, a group of scholars who followed in Calvin's footsteps were known as the Puritans. It was interesting how both Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola once both went to the University of Paris and how the two would later clash and their successors would too. The Calvinist scholars of England during the reign of King James (hence the translation was named after him) went to diligently search for the Dead Sea scrolls and many more to help form what would be the King James Bible today. The proof-reading was done seven times by Calvinist scholars. There were guards watching every move as deadly infiltration by Jesuit spies was there. Then proof-reading was done seven times which is a biblical number and it was still done by Calvinist scholars.

If you've got a decent English translation of the Bible today in your hands - you can thank the Protestant scholars of yesterday. They were very careful to handle the Word of God. They knew that they couldn't mess up with the Word of God. They even placed italics to emphasize it wasn't found in the Dead Sea Scrolls because of the deterioration of the paper. Besides, I still want to emphasize that if you've got only one English translation you can trust today for its accuracy and scholarly translation - it's the precious King James which couldn't be possible without the Reformation! This further puts the Baptist Bride movement further into question because the KJV wasn't translated by Baptists and it's a Calvinist translation of the Bible!

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